After a much publicized world wide search the Rugby Football League has announced that Steve McNamara is the man to coach England into the next World Cup.
Damn…..
The Rugby Football League have been comical in the way they have appointed coaches over the last decade. Ask yourself this, if the Great Britain/England team was your club side, would you have been satisfied with the choices made to coach your team?
England have gone from an out of his depth, totally unprepared and terribly uncommitted Tony Smith, to an English coach who is only just hanging onto his club position!
The Rugby Football League wanted a full time coach. I their world wide search it seems, they couldn’t even find one of those either!
Because Steve McNamara was the best choice the RFL could come up with, he needs help. So the RFL will have Sydney Roosters coach Brian Smith throw in his opinion in a role that is being talked about in the same way that Wayne Bennett helped the Kiwi’s out a few years ago.
Doesn’t this all just sound very stupid?
After a clean out last year of old losers that was needed for a very long time, the RFL needed to get a top class coach with representative experience to take over the England team and try and move them forward.
Forget this full time coaching rubbish. If the RFL wanted an ambassador then go out and find one of them. What England needs desperately is a coach that can come in and, you know, coach the side!
Has Australia or New Zealand ever felt the need to have a full time coach who’s sole job is to coach five games a year, at most? No. So if the two best teams in the world don’t have a full time coach, why does the 9th best team in England need one?
The RFL had an ideal opportunity here. With the Four Nations at years end coming up, they would have had the opportunity to say to some very good Australian coaches “Take over as England coach for a month and a half. Say you are in a caretakers role until we announce a the proper coach. If we fail, we were always going to fail. If you can turn England around, then you’re a genius”.
Would England fans rather have three years of Steve McNamara to look forward to, or would they swap that just to see what Phil Gould or Craig Bellemy could do with the team over the course of the Four Nations?
In announcing Steve McNamara as the England coach, the RFL has show a complete lack of ambition. It has shown how terribly it undervalues the Test team. If the RFL is willing to make do, why should Rugby League fans in England give a stuff, let alone people who don’t follow the game anyway?
